Hat tip to Mike Elgan, Computer World for pointing out the Map Channels Hotel Directory (http://hotels.mapchannels.com). It is, as he says, the ultimate hotel room finder. I spend all my day scouring travel websites and online deal finders, searching for hotel and airline deals and resources and travel tools. But this Google Maps mashup takes the cake. It’s simplicity, ease of use and the stunning breadth and scope of the results is light years ahead of any other travel search engine or deal finder you’ll find on the internet.

Way the Map Channels Hotel Directory works is pretty simple. You type in your city and state and checkin date and it’ll spit out a list of hotels, both in text and on the map, which have available rooms, with the address and a map locating each hotel. You have the option of additionally viewing pictures of the hotel and the list of amenities each hotel offers, along with a description. The listing can be sorted based on price, the name of the hotel, customer rating, hotel supplier and address. You can reduce or extend the radius of the search listing from the city center, or focus on a specific part of the city, so that results accurately reflect listings near your preferred location.

And unlike other babes-in-the-wood dotcoms who startoff with San Jose or San Francisco, this one has worldwide coverage, meaning you can search for hotels anywhere in the world. I did a search for Los Angeles,CA. Few seconds later I was staring at a radar-like map with 179 red dots spread all over LA, along with a text list of all 179 hotel names, addresses and prices starting from $29 budget motels upto $550 luxury star hotels. I checked the two boxes to include ’Image gallery’ and ‘Detailed’, and the page relaoded to include pictures of the hotels and comprehensive details and amenity lists from each hotel.

I’ve got used to travel search web sites stiffing you by taking forever to cough up a list and then showing you a few ’sponsored’ results along with a list of obsolete providers, without any actual information, which in turn sends you on a wild goose chase of 10-15 hotels who may or may not exist, and if they do, they may or may not have rooms, and if they do have rooms, the amenities may or may not be what you wanted, and so on….Not so with this mashup. I’m not sure how Map Channels Hotel Directory managed to plug in google maps with real time information about room availability at hotels the world over, but whatever they did, you’re sure as fire going to see almost every travel search engine and deal finder worth its salt do exactly the same.  

Posted on April 6th, 2008 by PLing
Filed under: Hotels, Travel Tips